The last century saw war and death on an unprecedented scaleand the early signs from our present century are that this patternof self-inflicted human carnage will accelerate. Underlyingthe stark headline figures of fatalities—whether the three anda half thousand in the United States, the tens of thousandsin Afghanistan, or the hundred thousand or more in Iraq—arejust far too many stories of unnecessary pain, grief and loss.
Dear reader in 2055, crystal-ball gazing is a foolhardy pursuit.Today, there are countless local and regional projects afoot,both in the UK and elsewhere, aiming to promote mutual understandingand respect, and complementing these are a smattering of keypolitical initiatives on the international stage. But the one thing,perhaps above all else, that offers me hope for the world fiftyyears hence is the increasing and now global interest in thelife and works of Rumi. For such is the stature of the man,and the universality of his message, that he can I believe,even today, serve as the elusive bridge between the Orient and Occident.In death, just as in life, he continues to remind us that wecan and must find other ways:

Go not to the quarter of despair; there is hope
go not towardsdarkness; there are suns.

‘Our Master from Rome’
Born in the Eastern part of the Ancient Persian Empire nearpresent-day Afghanistan, he was named Jalal-ud-din meaning ‘TheMajesty of Religion’. But even such a name failed to dojustice to this child prodigy, and his father, himself a distinguishedscholar of religion, conferred on him the title Maulana.
It was whilst wandering through a Turkish book bazaar some yearsago that I began to appreciate the affection with which Rumicontinues to be held among the peoples of the East. ‘Doyou have any of Rumi's works in English?’ I inquired.‘Mevlana Rumi?’ came the hurt bookseller's whisperedresponse, gently pointing out that I had perhaps unintentionallyneglected to use the proper title. And although this is a genericterm of respect, such is the veneration in which Rumi is heldthat if used alone Maulana (Mevlana in Turkish), meaning ‘Our Master’,is throughout much of the Muslim world a synonym for this supremetroubadour. After almost a decade of regularly turning to Maulana'steachings in search of light, I understand why he is held insuch veneration.
The threat of the Mongol invasion in Persia led the young Jalal-ud-din's familywestwards, eventually to settle in Anatolia (present-day Konyain the southern part of modern-day Turkey). Because of the Byzantinepast of the region it retained the name Rum (‘Rome’)among the Anatolians, and it was from this historical connectionthat Jalan-ud-din assumed the toponym Rumi, ‘The Man of Rome’.Burning in the light of the sun
It was at the feet of his father, Baha-al-din, that the youngRumi acquired an appreciation and love for the works of thecelebrated medieval theologian and ascetic Abu-Hamid al-Ghazali(d.1111). Their two lives offer many parallels, not least inthe way that both, at the height of their careers in religiouslaw, were to throw off the shackles of academic and jurisprudential deliberationsto pursue the religion of the heart. The impressionable youngman, as history records, was also introduced by his father tosome of the leading spiritual lights of his age including most notablyFarid ud-din Attar (d.1220), author of the deeply memorablepoem The Conference of the Birds; these influences doubtlesslaid the foundations for his later transformation.
But for a meeting with Shams of Tabriz (d.1247) it is unlikelythat Rumi's name would ever have found its way on to the pagesof history. For it was this meeting that, caused him to turnfrom the life of a scholar/preacher and become ‘the greatestmystical poet of any age’.
Throughout history there have always been spiritual poles thatform the axes around which our world rotates. Shams must havebeen one such pole. It is clear from the accounts of his life,however fragmentary, that he had no care for the world of form,but rather was in a perpetual quest for that sophia perennisthat underpins our universe. In their encounter, it wasas if these two travellers on a desert path reached an oasisfrom where they could both draw the sustenance needed for thelong and difficult journey onwards. Each found in his fellow'scompany a way to open the heart in a manner previously impossible.Shams (meaning ‘Sun’) exerted the most extraordinary alchemyon Rumi, the man of letters, and vivified the growth of hislatent spiritual and literary genius. Like an experienced physician,Shams was able to identify the ailment from which Rumi suffered—anailment that, were he to appear today, he might recognize inmany of us—but of which he had hitherto been blissfullyunaware, and from there guide him onto the wholeness his innerbeing so craved:

The intellectual quest, though fine as pearl or coral,
is notthe spiritual search.
The spiritual search is on another level;
spiritual wine is another substance!
The spiritual path wrecksthe body
and afterwards restores it to health.
It destroys thehouse to unearth the treasure
and with that treasure buildsit better than before.

Love is the ailment...
Love is the transformative force that infuses every aspect ofRumi's world and herein lies his appeal and the timelessnessof his message: there is an inherent unity in our universe,and love is the key to realizing it. It is for thisreason that we have the capacity to love and moreover the need tobe loved.
It is this primordial cry, inherent in each of us and acutelyperceived by Rumi, that forms the subject matter of the Mathnawi,a vast six-volume work consisting of lyrical poetry and parables.This, the external manifestation of his encounter with Shams,stands as the treasure of the Persian-speaking world and ismemorized, in part at least, by every literate member of Persiansociety. ‘The Koran in Persian’, as it is known,is an account of the pangs of separation, opening with the cryof the reed as it is pulled from its bed:

Listen to the reed (flute), how it is complaining!
It is tellingabout separations (saying),
"Ever since I was severed from thereed field, men and
women have lamented in (the presence of)my shrill cries.
(But) I want a heart (which is) torn, tornfrom separation,
so that I may explain the pain of yearning."
Anyone who has remained far from his roots,
seeks a return (tothe) time of his union."

This pain of separation is manifest at birth as the cry withwhich an infant enters the divine amphitheatre. Although audibleto all, alas few understand. From this moment onwards, the soul'sone quest is to re-experience something of that primordial senseof bliss. But engulfed by our passion, we are so often drawnto the world of transience rather than the world of permanence.The forms and manifestations of this poisoned love are many,as the reed opines:

‘I lamented in every gathering;
I associated with thosein bad or happy circumstances.
(But) everyone became my friendfrom his (own) opinion;
he did not seek my secrets from withinme.
My secret is not far from my lament,
but eyes and ears donot have the light (to sense it).’

The love for the ephemeral, whether for a woman or man, forpossessions, position, power or legacy, is all ultimately illusory:

How long will you say,
‘I will conquer the entire worldand fill it with myself?’
Even if snow covered the worldcompletely,
the sun could melt it with a glance.

And in love is the healing
The details surrounding Shams' appearance in Konya are hazy,but the anguished poetic outpourings that his sudden disappearanceswere to cause Rumi are now known the world over. For it is thispoetry, much of it dedicated in memory to Shams, that is nowto be found in bookshops from East to West, on calendars andon the Worldwide Web (in abundance), and is moreover being recitedin all manner of places of worship, both orthodox and New Age.More bizarrely, perhaps, ‘Rumi-mania’, as Lewisnotes in the introduction to his scholarly work, has increasinglypenetrated popular culture such that his lyrics can now be foundin pop songs, opera and theatre; for the past decade, indeed,he has been the best-selling poet in the USA.
The departure of Shams caused Rumi to realize that his attention,affection and love (which was not homoerotic as some writershave supposed) were all more appropriately directed elsewhere.First burned and then consumed by the power of love, he, throughovercoming the lower self, witnessed an unveiling that allowedhim to drink directly from the Spring of Knowledge, somethingof the taste of which we too can still savour:

The reed's cry is fire—it's not wind!
Whoever doesn'thave this figure, may he be nothing!
It is the fire of Lovethat fell into the reed
it is the ferment of Love that fellinto the wine.
The reed (is) the companion of anyone who wassevered
from a friend; its melodies tore our veils.

And if the poetry in which many of us today find succour wasthe external manifestation of the healing that Shams worked,the Sema of the whirling dervish remains the more potent inwardmanifestation of that encounter. For as Rumi himself acknowledged,even he, one whose words he prophesied ‘will be told amongthe lovers, centuries after my death’, was unable to find thelanguage to do justice to the subject of his preoccupation:

Whatever description or explanation I give of love,
when I reachlove I am ashamed of my exposition.
Although commentary by thetongue clarifies,
love that is tongueless is of greater clarity.
As the pen was hastening to write
when it came to love it split asunder.

After removal of the long black cloak of death, the seeker'swhite inner garment, representing the burnished soul, is exposed.Silently dancing, one foot pinned to the ground representingthe necessity for a firm anchor in authentic religion, whilstthe other leg, twirling, symbolizes interaction with and responsibilityto all else, irrespective of place, time, colour, language orcreed, with whom we share the divine breath. Right arm outstretched,palm upwards, receiving from the Creator; left arm lowered palm facingdownwards, delivering to the created world.
This majestic dance is the twirling of all those who revel inDivine Love. And today, he continues to invite us, as he hasdone for close on eight centuries now, to partake in the celestialrhapsody and through so doing be rendered whole again:

Whatever there is, is only He,
your foot steps there in dancing:
The whirling, see, belongs to you,
and you belong to the whirling.
What can I do when Love appears
and puts its claws around myneck?
I grasp it, take it to my breast
and drag it into thewhirling!
And when the bosom of the motes
is filled with theglow of the sun,
They enter all the dance, the dance
and donot complain in the whirling!